How to Make a Wheel of Fortune Game Using Microsoft Powerpoint

By Kevin Irons

Wheel of Fortune is and has been one of the more popular daily game shows in America over the last 25 years. Making your own version of Wheel of Fortune using Microsoft PowerPoint can be a fun and relatively easy task, and it can be an entertaining and educational game for use inside and outside of the classroom. You can use a Wheel of Fortune PowerPoint game to help promote the learning vocabulary words, or to put our own twists on such Wheel of Fortune puzzle categories like "before and after."

Things You'll Need

Computer

Poster board

Glue

Velcro strips

Note cards

Pencil

Ruler

Dice

Play money (optional)

Bonus round prizes (homework pass, candy, etc.)

Making a Wheel of Fortune Game Using Microsoft PowerPoint

Step 1

Open PowerPoint and begin a new session. Click the "Home" tab, and then make 19 additional slides. In the title heading on the slides, write the numerical value you want the slide to present, and then color in the slides using red, yellow, white, blue and green. The numerical listings should be: 100, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, 500, 600, 700, 750, 900, 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000. Five slides should still be blank in your PowerPoint file. Instead of using numerical values in the title heading, make two "Lose a Turn" slides (colored yellow), two "Bankrupt" slides (colored black) and one "Free Play" (any color).

Step 2

Save the PowerPoint. Write "Wheel of Fortune" at the top of your piece of poster board. Using the ruler, mark three horizontal rows on your poster board with a pencil; this is where your "Wheel of Fortune" letters will go. Put glue on the pieces of Velcro, and glue them about a quarter-inch apart from each other. Erase the horizontal pencil lines; place about 10 note card letters per line. Glue the strips of Velcro to each side of the note card. Write a letter on one side of the note card. Make more note cards for more common letters, like vowels, and the consonants S, T, L and R.

Step 3

Open the PowerPoint and mix up the order of the slides. Open the slide show, and have people "spin" the wheel by rolling the dice and then hitting the space bar to correspond with the number that comes up on the dice. Have the "host," the person who knows the answer to the puzzle on the poster board, flip the letter note cards around on the puzzle board when they guess correctly and keep track of all of the letters called.

Step 4

Open a new PowerPoint file and create 3-5 new slides. These slides will be the "bonus round," the round after the regular game ends that determines if an individual player or a team gets a prize. In the subject lines of the PowerPoint slides, write what items you will have for prizes. If this is done in a classroom, prizes could be homework passes, candy or extra free reading time. Save the slide show and exit.

Step 5

Arrange the puzzle board accordingly, break the participants into teams and start the game. Players "spin" the wheel until they pick an incorrect letter or the puzzle is solved. Participants have the option of "solving" the puzzle at any time. Have someone be a scorekeeper to accumulate the teams' points, and the winner after three puzzles will be the team with the highest point total. Bankrupt spaces only affect that round's sum of points. The winning team will be allowed to "spin" for the bonus round. During the bonus round, exit out of the "wheel" PowerPoint presentation, load the "bonus round," and have students roll the dice to determine what their prize will be if they solve the puzzle correctly. To play again, simply open the "wheel" PowerPoint presentation, rearrange the puzzle board, erase the scores and begin again.